The study will focus on the section of Claiborne between Napoleon and Elysian Fields avenues
New Orleans has been awarded a $2 million federal grant to study ways to revitalize the Claiborne Avenue corridor, including possible demolition of the elevated Interstate 10 expressway, Mayor Mitch Landrieu's office announced Wednesday.
View full size'The grant will give us the opportunity to evaluate the future of the Claiborne/elevated I-10 expressway,' Mayor Mitch Landrieu says.A group of local civic activists and planners in July released a report that called for removing the elevated expressway over Claiborne and turning the 2.2-mile stretch between Elysian Fields Avenue and the Pontchartrain Expressway near the Superdome into a surface-level boulevard.
The two-year federal grant will cover a wider range of issues, but it is expected to include a study that could confirm the feasibility of demolition from the traffic-engineering and perhaps financial standpoints.
Calling the grant "great news for our city and its citizens," Landrieu said it "will guide strategic integrated investments in housing, transportation and land-use planning to realize the full potential in neighborhoods along the Claiborne corridor. Further, the grant will give us the opportunity to evaluate the future of the Claiborne/elevated I-10 expressway."
He said he is "looking forward to receiving comprehensive data that will guide our plans to revitalize this community."
Landrieu told an Urban Land Institute meeting in July that he was open to the idea of tearing down the expressway.
"It could be a game-changer," he said of the idea. "It could reconnect two of the city's most historic neighborhoods." He added, "I'm not saying I'm for it. I'm just saying it's worth thinking about."
The Claiborne expressway, built in the 1960s, has long been the object of criticism, especially since the construction of Interstate 610 reduced the need for an inner-city freeway.
The city's application for the federal grant, awarded jointly by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation, makes clear where its authors' sympathies lie on the issue of the elevated expressway. It describes the highway's history as "a tale of environmental and social injustice ... tied to the overall decline of many of New Orleans' most historically and culturally significant communities."
The application notes that the July report "found that removing the expressway would not cause significant traffic impacts. However, the topic of the ... expressway is a highly sensitive, polarizing issue that elicits emotional reactions from residents throughout the region, and therefore demands a thoughtful and thorough study."
The grant application says the study will focus on the section of the Claiborne corridor between Napoleon Avenue and Elysian Fields, with secondary attention to the areas of the corridor in the Lower 9th Ward and in the Hollygrove area near the Jefferson Parish line.
It says the study "will analyze potential infrastructure investments" that would "improve transit; connect housing to jobs, schools and health care; manage soil and water; and promote livable communities as economic development."
The study team's vision for redeveloping the corridor, it says, "includes a reintegration of the city's neighborhoods across the physical boundary of the Claiborne/elevated I-10 expressway to promote thriving small businesses and resident leadership."
The July report was prepared by Waggonner & Ball, a local architectural firm, and Smart Mobility Inc., a Vermont consulting firm, for the Claiborne Corridor Improvement Coalition, a local group, and the Congress for the New Urbanism, a national organization that advocates "walkable, human-scaled neighborhoods" as an alternative to urban sprawl.
The document said eliminating the expressway would have numerous benefits, such as removing an eyesore, reducing noise and air pollution, increasing opportunities for public transit, and promoting investment that would eliminate blight and create economic development in the Treme and 7th Ward neighborhoods.
Although travel times for motorists who now use the expressway would be longer, the report said, the increases would be only a few minutes, and accessibility to the French Quarter and other destinations along the expressway route would "improve substantially with a better-connected street network."
Although it suggested replacing the elevated roadway with a surface-level boulevard tied into the city's regular street grid, it said even that much construction might not be necessary in the section of the route between St. Bernard Avenue and Elysian Fields. In that section, it said, the traditional street network could be completely restored, with no new major artery created. Traffic that now uses the expressway in that area presumably would shift to Elysian Fields and other major streets.
The report also argued the financial feasibility of demolition, saying the choice is not between spending millions on demolition and doing nothing. "The Claiborne expressway is an aging interstate that ... is nearing the end of its useful life and beginning to deteriorate," it said. It "will require more frequent maintenance, and possibly reconstruction, to carry traffic safely."
In fact, it said, the Federal Highway Administration's national bridge inventory has reported that several interchange ramps on the highway are deteriorating and need more than $50 million in repairs or replacement.
Bruce Eggler can be reached at beggler@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3320.